


A Sure Thing

by CactusFlowers



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clarke's birthday, F/M, Med Student Clarke, Meddling Raven, Smoking, Stripper Bellamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 07:30:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2684459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CactusFlowers/pseuds/CactusFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Clarke's 21st birthday. Raven want's to do something a little naughty to help her high strung friend loosen up. She hires a stripper.<br/>That stripper is Bellamy Blake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sure Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello.  
> Yes, okay so I got quite a bit of positive feedback from the first Bellarke fic I posted, which is always A+ so thank you to everyone who read/kudos'd/commented/bookmarked/etc. that.
> 
> This takes kind of a different speed, and I kind of feel like I need to warn you all that I'm slightly obsessed with the idea of Firefighter!Bellamy, and I have four-ish other fics in the works that in some way have Bellamy as either a firefighter or playing one: in this he's a stripper who plays a firefighter. But they're all Bellarke or involve Bellarke so, who cares? 
> 
> As per my last fic, this has not been beta'd because I'm an overgrown toddler. If you'd like to beta my fic's, feel free to drop me a line somewhere (I have a tumblr if that helps) because I could use all the help I can get. 
> 
> Disclaimer: All rights belong to their respective owners-I'm not profiting form this in anyway; I'm just wrasslin' someone else's 'gaters for a bit.

It was Clarke's twenty-first birthday. She had woken up, taken a shower, ate her breakfast, and walked out the door before her roommate was even awake just like it was any other day.  
But it was her birthday.

Raven, her best friend and roommate, had said she was lucky that her birthday was on a Saturday because it meant they could all go drinking and not have to worry about work or school the next day. Clarke didn't really want to go drinking, though it was almost a rite of passage--drinking legally on your twenty-first in a bar. But no, Clarke wanted to go to Half Price Books and buy more books that she was never going to have the time to read, she wanted to have dinner with her mom, and maybe after that go to a club with Raven and their friends. Except Clarke wasn't in charge of her birthday this year. That's what Raven told her, anyways.

Knowing her friend, Clarke was mentally preparing herself for club hopping and binge drinking, and possibly being set up with a complete stranger. Clarke made a face at the thought. It had been five years since Clarke had been with...well, anyone. There was one time when she had drunkenly made out with Raven, but they didn't do anything else and never talked about it again--much to Clarke's dismay.

Still, she had the morning to herself (mostly), and aside from the constant push notifications on her phone from Facebook and Twitter from people she barely even knew wishing her a happy birthday, it was a quiet if chilly November morning. She stopped into a Starbucks--because how could she not treat herself on her birthday?--and ordered a venti vanilla bean frappacino because she was _that_ person who ate ice cream in December when there was snow and ice on the ground. Then she made her way into the Half Price Books that was next door and saw that the cute cashier was there this morning. She huddled down into her scarf to hide her blush when she saw him notice her walk into the historical fiction row.

For a few weeks Clarke had been coming to this particular Half Price Books because of him. His name tag read _Bellamy_ , but Clarke refused to consciously let herself know that. She wanted him to introduce himself, she wanted that formal seduction-- _introduction_! Still, he was the reason she kept coming back and buying more and more books that she wouldn't be able to read not even in the next two years. A few times he had made mentions of books that he was reading and Clarke had made special trips to other book stores to pick them up, but they too ended up on the pile of things she had yet to even crack open.

She searched the historical fiction for a bit before moving on to the science fiction section. Since fiction was Clarke's favorite genre in her heart of hearts, though if you were to judge by the books in her apartment you'd guess it was anatomy and biology books. She trace the spine of several books, looking to see if she could find the one Robert Heinlein book she _didn't_ have.

"Can I help you find anything?" A voice from the end of the row interrupted her search. She looked over, startled and then slightly embarrassed. The cute cashier was standing there, his hands in his pockets, and if Clarke didn't think it was absolutely absurd she would have thought he was flexing his well toned arms to stand out against his tight fitting t-shirt.

"I'm, uh, looking for a Heinlein book-- _Friday_. I can never seem to find it, no matter where I look," She spoke more to the shelves than she did to the man who she could feel watching her.

"Let me see if I can help you," He offered, bending down to look on the bottom row of the H section. As he knelt down his shirt rode up in the back so that Clarke had a clear view of his lower back and the dimples that made Clarke's imagination go into overdrive.

"It was _Friday_ you said?" He asked, pulling out a book and standing up to hand it to her.

She looked at him then, the two of them face to face. His eyes were so brown, and there was something slightly mysterious about him...

"Thanks," She offered awkwardly as she took the book from him.

"No problem," He smiled at her before the two went their separate ways.

She checked out with someone else on the register, but she couldn't help but wish to see him one more time before she left the shop.

 

* * *

 

The rest of her day went fairly uneventful until she got a text from Raven to meet her at their apartment. When she got there she was ambushed by a group of women who were "kidnapping" her for her birthday party. They put a tiara on her head and sash around her shoulder that said "21st birthday" and dragged her to a hotel room that looked like something neither Clarke nor Raven could afford. Her mom probably had a hand in this if this all cost as much as Clarke imagined it did.

"Come on Clarke, this is going to be so much fun!" Monroe gushed, "There's cake and booze and a stripper--"

"Monroe!" Raven yelled, scolding the girl with just her pristine eyebrows. Clarke had a thing for people's eyebrows, she didn't quite understand it.

"Sorry, Reyes. I just got so excited," Monroe apologized. The poor girl looked like a kicked puppy and all Clarke wanted to do was coddle her while simultaneously ripping Raven a new one for getting a stripper.

Seriously, a _stripper_.

"Seriously Raven? A stripper?" Clarke questioned, though it was more like an interrogation. She followed her roommate around the counter of the kitchenette so that they could talk.

Raven turned on her heel to face Clarke while she opened a bottle of, well, Clarke couldn't' tell what it was but it was definitely alcohol, "Look, Griffin, relax. I know this dude, okay, he's a solid guy. He's hot, too. And he does this mostly as a living, I say mostly because he also has a day job, but you know--"

"Raven, I don't care, I don't _want_ a stripper!"

Raven set the bottle down on the counter and took her friend's shoulder in her hands so that she could make sure that Clarke was looking her in the eye, "Clarke, honey, you need to get laid."

"I don't want to listen to this--"

"Come on, Clarke, he'd be a sure thing!" Raven tried to ease her mind, but strippers weren't hookers, and she was far less fond of the idea of a hooker than she was of a stripper. And that was very low on the list of things she was fond of. 

The doorbell rang and Monroe opened the door. A handsome man dressed as a firefighter posed in the doorway, "I heard there was a party here that was on fire."

The rest of the girls screamed and pulled him through the door. They turned the music up and everyone was dancing, the fireman stripper dancing with any girl that managed to worm their way into his space.

Raven tried to pull her into the mix but she held back and poured herself a shot of tequila. She was going to need a lot of it to make it through the night.

Sadly, Clarke did not get as much tequila as she had hoped for. In fact, that one shot was all she managed to get out of two bottles of the stuff. And it was the good kind, too. She did manage to get something with vodka in it that tasted slightly of licorice, but she wasn't going to ask what it was. She had been seated on one of the couches for most of the time the rest of the girls were dancing with the guy who looked so oddly familiar. 

"Okay, where's the birthday girl?" He hollered and the girls all cheered. Someone grabbed Clarke and pulled her up out of her seat to put her in a chair that was placed in the middle of the room.

The music changed and suddenly it was just the stripper and Clarke. That's when she saw his face, _really_ saw his face.

"Bellamy?" She croaked, her throat felt like it was closing up and her mouth was dry. He didn't hear her over the music and continued with his routine. He took off his helmet, then his coat.

The t-shirt came next, which pulling it off from underneath suspenders was a performance in and of itself and clearly this guy knew what he was doing. He didn't take anything else off before he started shaking his has in Clarke's face. It had the other girls whooping and cheering for him to "take it off" and "show me what you got", but Clarke was mostly silent during the performance.

After he had finished that part of his routine he slowly, seductively slid his suspenders down his broad, brown shoulders. His hands went to his buckle Clarke would have sworn one of the girls (probably Roma) fainted when began dancing as he unbuckled the pants and slid the zipper down. Clarke was still in fairly close proximity to his crotch, so she had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen next. He continued to dance and teasingly lower his pants until they were down around his ankles. His dark curly hair was almost close enough for Clarke to touch. She found herself wanting to, but she also knew that that probably wasn't how things like this were done. Not that she'd know, this was part of why she _didn't_ want a stripper.

So there he stood, clothes discarded and pants around his ankles in nothing but a sparkly purple thong, loud and as proud as he could be. Raven had given her a hundred dollar bill earlier and this was why. Now she had to muster up the courage to put the damn thing in the guy's thong.

Clarke locked eyes with Raven, sending daggers her way, before using her index and middle finger like tweezers to stuff the hundred dollar bill into the guys--into _Bellamy's_ thong.

After she completed that feat he went around dancing with the other girls and getting more money thrown at him than Clarke thought was really responsible for a bunch of college age girls in this economy. Clarke _really_ needed a drink.

* * *

At the end of the night, most of the girls were passed out in the hotel room, some of them were awake and puking in the bathroom, and all of them had partied harder than Clarke despite it being her day. She wrote out a note for Raven, telling her she was going back to the apartment and thanking her for the wonderful if weird party. She shrugged her coat on, grabbed her things, and left the hotel room. She saw Bellamy in the lounge and tried not to make eye contact as she left.

She stood outside of the hotel for a minute, finding her nerves were too wracked to allow her to think about how to get home. She knew exactly where she was, she was barely two blocks from her apartment, but her sense of direction was thrown off and her head was still filled with images of Bellamy's glorious ass nearly in her face.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her pack of cigarettes. She'd been trying to quit, honestly, she knew how bad they were for you, but sometimes she just needed to focus and nicotine--or whatever it was--helped her. Or, it helped soothe the fraying nerves that were becoming even more frayed by the second.

"I didn't know you were a smoker," Bellamy's voice came from the doorway to the hotel.

Clarke shrugged as she lit the cigarette between her lips. Inhaling the smoke and blowing it out through her nose before answering him, "I started smoking when I was trying to get into med school, and honestly I attribute smoking to my passing the MCAT, but...well, I've been trying to quit," Clarke blushed, looking at the cigarette in her hand, but in the cool November air it probably didn't make her face any redder than it already was.

"You're not staying with your friends?" He asked, he sounded a little concerned.

Clarke shook her head, "I live less than two blocks from here, I can walk home."

"But you're drunk," Bellamy stated it as a fact, and it ruffled some of Clarke's feathers.

"I'll have you know, I had a shot of tequila. And maybe something that had vodka in it, but I'm fine," She scoffed. But it turned sad, "I'm twenty-one today, and I'm fine."

Bellamy stifled a smile, "Can I tell you something?"

Clarke nodded.

"My twenty first birthday I spent sober sitting my seventeen year old sister and her boyfriend because they'd gotten into my mom's stash, and my mom was working kinda late that night and I knew that I couldn't go anywhere until she got home. She didn't get home until almost ten pm, and I had school the next day. I'm Bellamy, by the way."

"I mean, I know they wanted me to do this because I've been so uptight lately, because between med school and studying for med school and work I've been kind of a bitch," Clarke confessed, "But none of them gave me the chance. They got fucked up and I was the one left holding the empty bottle," She shuffled her feet against the pavement, "I'm Clarke. By the way."

"Ah, friends can be dicks sometimes, but they're still your friends. And now that you can legally drink, you will have _plenty_ of opportunities to get fucked up. Trust me," He gave her a severe look that told her he'd been there and done that and probably out grew the t-shirt.

"Tell you what, let me walk you home at least. You might not be drunk, but you also might be, and it's late at night and--"

"You want to walk me home?" Clarke interrupted. Now it was Bellamy's turn to blush and Gods, did that just do _something_ to her insides.

"I...yes, yes I do," He answered earnestly.

Clarke nodded, "Okay, so let's get to walking."

They began their walk in silence, making it to the end of the street before Clarke had to break the silence, "So, I know you work at Half Price Books. The one in Westerville."

"You were looking for the Heinlein book," Bellamy realized, "God, I can't believe, I'm so...Raven just said...I--"

"It's cool, really. It just doesn't help me much when the only reason I go to that one is because of you," Clarke let slip what she had been hoping she could keep secret for the rest of her life now that she knew this side of her stupid bookstore crush.

"You come in to buy books almost every week, somehow during my shit, I think I caught that," He laughed but it wasn't mean, it was endearing somehow, "Honestly I look forward to the days you come in, when I recognize you. Sometimes you look half dead and it's not until after you've left I realized, 'hey, that was that girl'."

"Those are the days I come in _before_ I have coffee," Clarke laughed and Bellamy laughed too, nodding his understanding. They lapsed into an easy silence for a few minutes, walking so close they were nearly hand in hand.

"So you work at _Half Price Books_ by day and strip by night?" Her incredulity was hard to hide.

"You could say that, I guess," He laughed under his breath, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets.

"You, um, well I mean...you do it very well," Clarke stumbled over her words and blushed.

Bellamy raised an eyebrow, "You think so."

It wasn't a question. If anything thing it was an accusation. Kill me now, she thought.

"So, how long has it been?" Bellamy's question shook her from her internal wish for death.

It took her off guard, "W-what? What do you mean?"

Bellamy did that "you know" motion with his eyebrows, "How long has it been?"

Clarke shook her head slightly, uncomprehending.

"Raven said it's been a while for you. Since you, you know."

He gave her a meaningful look and the realization of what he meant sent a hot wave of embarrassment through her, making her red probably from head to toe. She made a mental note to kill Raven when she saw her next.  
She stopped in her tracks, looking down the street, trying to gauge just where she was, trying to get her nerves back under control. It had been bad enough that the cute guy at the bookstore was also the stripper her friend hired for her birthday party, but for him to know that she'd been unintentionally celibate was more than she could really deal with.

Clarke raised her hand, showing him five fingers, and winced.

"Five months?" Bellamy sounded skeptical, almost incredulous.

Clarke screwed her face up, and shook her head, "Years. It's been five years." 

Bellamy's jaw dropped, "What? I mean, you would have been what, sixteen?" 

"Seventeen, he was my first boyfriend except he wasn't really my boyfriend. It's a long and complicated story that Raven would actually be able to tell you a lot more accurately than I."

"Why would Raven be better at telling the story of your first time than you?" It was an innocent enough question, but it made Clarke cringe all the same.

"Finn--the guy I not-dated--was Raven's boyfriend at the time that...well, when we were together. Like I said, it's a long complicated story and I don't like talking about it," Clarke didn't pout, she never pouted, but she set her mouth in such a way that yes, she was pouting by the end of that sentence--but it was an angry pout, and therefore Clarke didn't count it as an actual pout.

"Okay, princess, whatever you say," Bellamy waved his hand like he was serving something to her and then bowed. The dude actually _bowed_. 

Clarke laughed and reached up to straighten the tiara that was (magically) still on her head, "You are so weird."

Bellamy gave her an expression of "I know and I'm proud of it", before offering her his arm. She cautiously wrapped her left arm around his right and the two continued walking towards her apartment.

"You know, I'm going to kill Raven, so if you'd like to say any last goodbyes you should probably come up and leave her a note," Clarke suggested as they neared her stoop.

"Are you inviting me up to your apartment?" Bellamy teased, his eyebrows up and a smile on his face. Gods above, she wanted to kiss that look off of his face. She did want to invite him to go up, she wanted to invite him to go down, too, but that was for another time.

Clarke stopped at the foot of the stairs to her building, "No, not this time."

Again with his eyebrows doing that thing, quirking up like he knew a big secret that made this conversation seem hilarious to him, it infuriated Clarke. She turned away from him, walking up the steps to her door, only to hear him call out, "But perhaps another time?"

She turned slightly to look at him. In the streetlight he looked rugged and mysterious and at the same time so innocent and soft. How a man like Bellamy Blake could be both she didn't know, but then he did work at a bookstore and moonlit as a stripper, so maybe there was a way to reconcile the two parts. She nodded slowly, "We'll see."

 


End file.
